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Puma's 818 Build

My name is Eric, but my close friends call me Puma. In college I studied architecture then went back to school for engineering. At one point I used to own a speed shop, and I am fairly handy when it comes to fabrication and custom work. I have a turbo forester, a single cab short bed silverado, and a built G8GT. I am a cobb certified tuner, and have been tuning and building cars for about 20 years. I was always interested in 818's, but just never seemed to be in a good place to take on a build of that magnitude. I also used to have another turbo forester...... which is how I got into this predicament. My wife was driving the "beater" forester and a teenager pulled out right in front of her. She ate up his bumper and the car was deemed a total loss even though it was a fairly easy fix. The forester had such a low blue book value that I contemplated not even reporting it to the insurance, and just fixing it myself. I was hunting parts to fix it when a friend sent me a post of someone selling a partially built 818. They had lost interest and had too many projects going. The forester made for a decent donor and I already owned it so everything seemed pretty straight forward...... I negotiated a price that included delivery and here we go on this crazy ride, as I learn how to build a kit car.

1. This car is built from a forester donor rather than a wrx donor.
2. We are attempting to use a 32bit SAVCS forester wiring harness and ECU.
3. The transmission and TCU will be from a BAJA along with the sport shifter with "tap up tap down" shifting. We will also be attempting to use the JDM paddle shifters behind the forester steering sheel.
4. We will be attempting to retain power brakes, but keep them from being overly sensitive, by using a JDM Miata brake booster.
5. We will be attempting to retain the ABS from the forester.

I will backtrack and update this post as the build progresses.

this is the good forester (my daily)

this is the donor forester (my beater) I dont have many good photos of it, but heres a drone photo from our last get together (it's the silver one in the woods)

Thanks Bob, I downloaded them. I hope to be diving into the wiring harness over the next month or so.

These are the photos I was sent for the partially complete 818 kit I bought.
I think I had already made up my mind, and after getting several more photos and working out a deal to have it delivered, I accepted and became the new owner.

So I took delivery, and from day one i had parts absolutely EVERYWHERE. It was pretty exciting to see the roller and all the boxes. I was a little disappointed because the fiberglass rear end had a bad crack in it, but I didn't make a big stink about it, and figured id fix it towards the end of the build.

The first thing I did was clean up the best I could so that I could actually move in the shop with all these spare parts stacked EVERYWHERE. Then I started cleaning and wiping down the 818, and getting ready to tackle the first major challenge, figuring out what had to be done to get the automatic transmission to fit correctly and what do do for a mount, since they are completely different from the manual cars.

As you can see it did not fit well at all. The pan hit the frame on the driver side, the filter was totally blocked by a side support, and the X bracing in the center needed to be totally removed for the trans pan to drop down where it was supposed to be. Another issue is the sensor in the rear of the trans and the mount is so far rearward that I was worried it was going to stick out of the back of the car.

It might seem like I have a huge headstart given that my car is already a roller...... I am realizing now that given fab work and changes required to use the forester and the automatic trans are putting me WAY behind time wise.

So I took off the transmission tail housing after looking at another video an 818 owner posted. I put it in the vice and cut the back of it off using a sawzall. I then mounted it in the Bridgeport and machined a nice flat surface to mount a block off plate to. Another obstacle was cutting off the output shaft. The modification to the case was a considerable amount of work, and I later found out that subaru made a fwd transmission that I could have robbed the tail housing off of, and would have saved me a bunch of time. Oh well live and learn.....

LOVE LOVE LOVE my old antique bridgeport. Don't know what I would do without this machine.

Next I machined a block off plate, then sealed it and bolted it on. Hopefully it never needs to be removed, I used some crazy adhesive.

So I was able to get the transmission modified and reassembled. I felt pretty good about that part of it, so I took the next big step, and started cutting the frame up to make it all physically fit. Again I was blown away at how much modification was required vs. what I originally thought would be pretty minor.

I started by cutting the X bracing out completely, and then doubling the right side rail for strength.

The left side is where I ran into trouble. The pan and the drain plug was all over the frame rail so i cut it out completely, as well as the angled bracing to the shock tower.

Once I had the frame modified and everything tacked in place, it was time to figure out how to fabricate a trans mount bracket, fabricate a bracket on the frame, and also figure out what trans mount I wanted to use. Everything Subaru had for trans mounts seemed completely insane, so i used a generic energy suspension piece for a GM application. Once I had everything tacked in place, I mocked up the transmission and thats when I started feeling a little uncomfortable. The trans pan seemed like it hung low in the frame and there wasnt much to keep it from getting punctured if i ran over something so I welded a cage around the pan where it dropped down and added a piece of plate steel to bolt the transmount to.

So all the fab work to make this trans work correctly has really paid off. The support no longer blocks the filter, the drain plug is easily accessible, the trans pan drops down into the recess I created, and I have put in enough reinforcing that I should never have any issues with these changes. I have started priming and painting everything now. (my primer was white)

Well to be honest I was pretty frustrated at how non-user friendly the forum was for hosting photos and I almost gave up. I came back a month later with more patience and learned how to use the gallery, and I resized all my photos and corrected all my links. I also added a few more photos and descriptions as well as a few videos. I also just learned that I can't have more than one video in a post the hard way (UGGGG!) I have a ton of new updates to the build and hope to have time to post them soon!

I was so stoked that I finished the fabrication work, and in my head I wasthinking well things should speed up substantially since its mostly just bolting things together now...... so I started working on deleting the catted up pipe, when I realized a had a spare twin scroll turbo setup from a JDM subaru just hanging out on a shelf not being used. I went to take the turbo, manifolds, and up pipe off the car when I realized I had a few issues. The donor had a torn turbo inlet hose, as well as working TGV's still attached to the manifold. UGGGG so here we go backtracking again. I sourced a set of newer style TGV's to delete the throttle plates and dividers, and grabbed a NA 2.5 subaru intake off the "spare parts" shelf. Then I got lost in modification land.

Dont forget to take care of your body when you are doing this kinda stuff. High speed porting tools like a Fordom make a lot of tiny aluminum debris that you can inhale and its really bad for you. I know I sound like a damn shop teacher but wear safety glasses and a respirator if you are doing this kinda work.

I started with my most favorite tool in the whole world (mr. bridgeport) to machine out the dividers so I wouldn't have to spend so much time porting them out by hand. I cut a little more than halfway through then flipped them over and did the same from the other side.

This is my porting cart. Magic happens here (joking)

After sanding and getting a nice finish on the TGV's, I needed to plug the holes in them.

Lastly, I ported the aluminum pipe plugs smooth on the inside of the TGV.

The intake I want to use is the one on the left. Stock intake on the right. The NA intake has larger straighter runners as well as a larger plenum.

This manifold is not exactly a straight forward swap, as the mounting holes for the TGV's dont line up with the ones on the turbo cars. The center holes in the manifold will have to be slotted by hand, but for the outer holes it was easiest to slot the TGV's with Mr. Bridgeport.

So the intake manifold is where I got grossly side tracked once again. If it wasn't for this intake I would probably already have the brakes and harness in the car. The intake is really cool, but it has a lot of casting imperfections and mounts or bosses on it that are not used in my application. I decided to remove them and finish up with a thick glossy powder coating.

In this video you can also see the finished TGV's are what is allowing me to bolt the intake to the mill table.

I have seen different recommendations for lubricant, and given the sensitivity of our lungs for any of those products that off gas during high speed grinding........ I have never been comfortable using them given my respirator is particulate only. Over the years I have been successful in dry cutting at relatively low speed. I don't tend to have any issues with the cutters loading up with material. I frequently switch back and forth between single cut and cross cut, with the largest diameter single cut removing material the fastest and also the roughest. I go to a large cross cut to get a smoother finish and a small diameter cross cut to get it smoother still. After that, its sanding rolls. I really hate the fine dust that the sanding rolls create so I don't really like using them, but if you need that level of finish then its a necessary evil. Hope this helps you.